“Yeah, how much time you want?”
“Come on, don’t trip on me, all right?”
“I ain’t trippin’. I’m serious as cancer. Time is money. What you want anyway?” he asked, turning now to look at her. She stood next to him staring up in his eyes, using her most seductive look, trying to get an edge on his cool demeanor. Yet she saw in his gaze nothing she was familiar with. Nothing she could work with to ease his defenses.
“I only want to get to know you. Damn, baby, are you that raw?” she asked, deciding to use her straightforward, no-nonsense approach. That’s what she saw in his eyes.
“First of all, I ain’t a baby. And second of all, knowing me may not be good for your health.” He’d started walking away again and she followed toward his car.
“Well, you should let me decide what’s good for my health, don’t you think?”
“Whatever,” Lapeace answered, looking both ways before crossing St. Andrews toward his car. He didn’t want any of his teachers and especially not security knowing he was driving to school. And yet he parked right out in front of the parking lot. He unlocked the door, pulled it open, stepped one foot up on the chassis, and rolled down the window. “So what’s up? What’s your name anyway?”
“I’m Tammy. And like I said, I was just trying to be friendly, that’s all,” she said in a pleading manner now. Her fingers rubbing the smooth lacquered body of his car.
“Uh-huh, well, I’m fin’ to bank to Wings n Things, you wanna roll or what?”
“Yeah, I’ll roll with you. What’s your name?”
“Knock it off, you know my name. Don’t you?” Lapeace watched her walk around the back of the car and refused to open the door until she responded.
“Yeah, okay, I do know your name, all right?” she admitted exasperatedly.
“Look, just come correct with me awright? Don’t push up wrong, ’cause I’m not the one, you feel me?” Lapeace said over the roof of his car, looking directly in her eyes.
“I gotcha, Lapeace.” He unlocked her door and she sat down in the Chevy, realizing for the first time how low it actually was. It felt as if she were sitting on the ground. Suddenly, without warning, the car jumped up with such force that she hit her head on the ceiling. “Ooh!” she screamed, startled by the sudden jerk, and then quickly tried to regain her cool. Lapeace paid her no mind. He pushed in “The Temptress Greatest Hits” and pulled off from the curb. He turned right on 68th Street and right again on Western Avenue. As they waited for the light on 69th and Western some students passed in front of them, eyeing the car closely. Lapeace pulled down his locs and eyed them back over the top. The car was in a normal-looking mode, whereas no one could tell that it was lifted. When the light turned green, Lapeace hit his three-wheel motion and pulled away slowly with the front left wheel a foot off the ground. Out of the sunroof he threw up his set. They cruised down Western Avenue until they hit 83rd, where Lapeace turned left and took Harvard to 84th and parked on the side of Wings n Things. After they’d eaten, each paying for their own, they rolled back down Western stopping once on 76th so Lapeace could get a bag of pot. He couldn’t deny that she was an attractive woman. Tall, shapely, aggressive—much like he’d imagined his woman would be when he fell in love. Yet his distrust of the hood rat type was so strong that he’d kept his mind on his money and that was it. Now an unfamiliar feeling began to tug at his heartstrings. A feeling, he knew, that threatened the tradition of his ethics. But he couldn’t resist the current, the pull, the gravity, the actual weight of this reality.
Soon, they were inseparable. Going everywhere together, hardly ever apart. She’d even begun to pull Lapeace away from his time with Sekou. A year passed, then two, and all was going good. Tammy had a job at a local market and Lapeace was making wise moves with his cash from the score. Tammy had said she was on birth control so Lapeace wore no condoms. Then, one day out of the blue, she called Lapeace, who was still living at Aunt Pearl’s. “Lapeace!” she said excitedly over the phone. “Guess what?”
“What’s that?”
“I’m pregnant!”
“You what?” asked Lapeace, half shouting, half screaming.
“Pregnant!” she shouted back without excitement and more with a challenged finality.
“I thought you was takin’ birth control?”
“I was, but I stopped ’cause they were causing menstrual problems for me. What’s wrong, Lapeace, ain’t you happy about this?”
“Happy? Tammy, I’m fifteen years old . . .” She burst into tears and Lapeace could hear her sobbing convulsively through the phone. He knew her face was contorted into a mask of emotional protest. Mouth pulled to one side by her pain, cheeks drawn up, over which ran torrents of salty tears—but what about his feelings? What about how he felt? He was crying inside, not having learned yet how to cry outwardly, his innards in knots. A child is such an awesome responsibility, he thought. “Tammy?”
“What?” she responded through sniffs and muffled sighs.
“What we gonna do about this?”
“What you mean what we gonna do? What you gonna do? ’Cause I’m having my baby.”
“You tricked me. You said you was on birth control. Now all of a sudden you pregnant. Talkin’ ’bout menstrual cramps. That’s bullshit.” His anger was present but subtle.
“So what you sayin’ Lapeace? You don’t want this baby? Is that it?”
“What I’m sayin’ is . . . you tricked me,” he said, his voice beginning to elevate emotionally. “Now you want my advice and cooperation. But you didn’t ask for it when your ass stopped taking them birth control pills, huh?”Tammy cried harder now. Heaving and coughing into the receiver and Lapeace wondered what her face was like then. The phone was dropped, then picked back up.
“Listen Lapeace, I only stopped taking them pills a month ago ... ”
“Only a month, huh?”
“Wait, let me finish. I was going to tell you, but it slipped my mind.”
“I’ll have to think about this. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Don’t hang up, La—” Click. She slammed down the dead receiver and balled up into a fetal position and cried. Twenty-two blocks away, Lapeace paced the length of his room thinking about his future. He overstood one very real thing—he loved Tammy. And his love was pure, it was without blemish. It was (and she overstood this far better than he) blind. His blind love for her overwhelmed him. He surmised that since she’d had so many abortions before that this was it—she really and truly would do the right thing and lock on to him.
Their son, Sundiata, was born in Black August. Named by Aunt Pearl, he was a robust baby full of life and intelligence. He was the spitting image of Lapeace. I’ll never be without Lapeace now, she reasoned, not as long as I have his seed. After Sun was born they took an apartment together on the west side of his neighborhood. The next year they’d had another child—another boy, who they’d named Tafuta, after Lapeace’s father. Tammy had graduated the year before and Lapeace had long since escaped from the L.A. Unified School District. She was doing hair, working out of a shop Lapeace had leased for her. Plus she was renting out booths to other cosmetologists. So when Molly, Lapeace’s personal accountant through family connections, informed him that there was an $85,000 discrepancy in his holdings, he couldn’t believe it. He didn’t approach Tammy with it but just quietly investigated her himself. He’d given her whatever she wanted, or thought she needed. He crossed his own lines of reality for her, for his new family, and she’d schemed him on everything. As his investments panned out and the revenue mounted, the deceit she’d begun to exemplify grew. And she’d lie through her teeth about the most trivial things. Lapeace began to despise her. She was foolish enough to think things were all good. Even as Lapeace plotted ways to teach her a lesson.
They’d moved into one of the bigger homes in the Eighties, over behind St. Andrews Park. Tammy, having gotten bourgeoisified, lived for the attainment of material possessions. She felt so less of h
erself as a result of all the wicked things she’d done behind Lapeace’s back that she could only find appeasement in material things. They alone filled the gaping void in her twisted soul. First she’d tried filling it with men—sleeping around with most of Lapeace’s homies and eventually his first cousin. If he’d had a brother she’d have slept with him too. When he found out about his cousin, she’d claimed rape. When he investigated further and found that condoms had been used, she confessed to the affair. His heart was twisted. Soon Molly informed him of diverted funds from her shop and it was then that Lapeace began to move on her. Tammy came home one afternoon—the boys hadn’t been picked up from their Headstart classes yet—to find an empty house, stripped bare. He’d not even left the carpet. She stood in the foyer dumbfounded, stricken by the reality of material loss—the loss of the only things that made her miserable life worth living. She went into a rage. She called the bank to find Lapeace had closed the account. She rushed into her bare bedroom to find that her clothes were gone. Her jewelry gone. Everything—gone. She fell to her knees and wept with her hands over her face. She couldn’t believe it. The phone rang and interrupted her sobbing.
“Is this Tammy?” asked an overly excited female.
“Yes, what is it?”
“Well, I don’t know how to tell you this, but your boyfriend was just at your shop, the Hair Palace, and he gave away everything in there. Everything. Then he locked the door and put up an OUT OF BUSINESS sign in the window. Girl, he had bitches lined up for blocks gettin’ your things. That nigga crazy. Hello?”
“Yeah, yeah. Thanks,” she answered robotlike and hung up the phone. It rang again. “Hello?”
“Tammy, you better look out your window, girl. Niggas takin’ your van,” said Val from across the street. Tammy leaped to her feet and ran through an empty hall, out through the living room, just in time to see the back of her Aerostar van turn the corner on a flatbed truck. She bolted back into the house and grabbed up the phone. She called Open Ridge Headstart and was startled to find that Sundiata andTafuta had been picked up early by their father. She slammed down the phone and paced the empty living room. She paged Lapeace and got no reply. Then, at 4:55 p.m. Lapeace called.
“Why you doing this Lapeace? And where are my fuckin’ kids!” she screamed.
“Do you have a job?” he asked, ignoring her questions and sounding cool as ever.
“You ain’t shit Lapeace . . .”
“Do you have a means of support?”
“You ain’t gonna get away with this shit you mothafucka.”
“Well, seeing as how you broke and ain’t got no means of support, you can’t possibly care for Sun and Taf. So I’ll keep the boys until you get your shit together. Here, take this number.” She scrambled for a pen, finding one in the junk drawer in the kitchen. And rushed back to the phone.
“What is it?”
“1-800-756-1637. You got that?”
“Yeah, but what number is this?”
“It’s the welfare office you stupid beeyach!” and he hung up.
When she picked up the phone again to page him there was no dial tone. He’d had the phone turned off. Which is why he called at 4:55. She sunk to her knees clutching the dead receiver, crying loudly and jerking about. She couldn’t believe the swiftness of Lapeace’s moves. Within three hours, he’d closed in on her world and shut it down. Now she had to stew in her own makings.
6
Lapeace, still in his blunt-induced drift, noticed only slightly that the music had stopped. That around him was screaming silence, wrapped in dark leather and trimmed in gold and platinum. The blunt burned on between his fingers, but he found it hard to move it to his lips. He needed to, however, because he couldn’t afford to allow depression to set in. Finally, using his tempered will, he eased up enough to rest his elbows on his knees. Whenever he thought of how happy he was with her at first it always turned to sour depression in the end. She had pretty much fucked up his mind and for the longest time thereafter he was very bitter toward women, yet he knew he had only himself to blame. For he had allowed her into his vibe and she did only what he was taught her nature required. He’d gotten taken. He slowly raised the blunt to his lips and got a hardy drag. The tip blazed red as he pulled the soothing smoke into his lungs. Held it for as long as they allowed and blew it out over the room. It was almost half gone. He looked at it for a long moment and for the umpteenth time marveled at the ingenuity of pot smokers to develop ever better ways to consume the plant. Who’d have imagined? Music, he reasoned, is what he needed to complete the groove. This time he chose something for the children. Before he got back to the comfort of the sofa, Gil Scott-Heron’s “Save the Children” came at him.
Shima padded softly into the room and positioned herself next to Lapeace on the sofa. She gently took the blunt from his fingers and inhaled it slowly. She held it for a long moment and then exhaled an even plume of cannabis discharge and doubled over in a coughing spasm. Lapeace patted her back, but of course this did nothing. For nothing was caught in her throat. Rather it was an attempt by her lungs to resist the smoky invasion by using a cough defense. She coughed on until her lungs were satisfied that they’d expelled or neutralized the threat. By then, naturally, she was very high.
“What you know about Gil Scott, Lapeace?” Shima asked, lifting the blunt back to her glistening lips and inhaling.
“I was turned on to him by my Aunt Pearl. You know, she used to be into all that black movement stuff. So I was raised up on his music. Whenever I wanna wind down on some real shit, I throw on some Gil.”
“Gil is definitely the man. ‘Save the Children,’ huh?”
“Yeah, that’s one of my favorites. I remember whenever I’d hear it as a child, I’d feel safe and loved. Aunt Pearl would hug me and hold on to me and sing the chorus softly in my ear. I’d sway along with her and think about a bright future. Aunt Pearl didn’t drink then. She’d smell almost like my attorney Safi’s office. She’d be wearing all that Afrikan garb, you know, flowing robes, head wraps, sandals, and stuff ?”
“Yeah,” said Shima thoughtfully. Visualizing Aunt Pearl. “I know what you mean.” She took another drag on the blunt.
“And she’d always be reading me things from this book or that. Quoting stuff and dropping names on me. But shit, all I remembered was the music. My Aunt Pearl never had no kids. Said the ancestors used her for something else besides bearing children. But she raised me, though, you know?” Lapeace was sitting on the edge of the sofa now, looking at Shima and gesturing his spiel with his hands.
“Babes, when you hear that song now do you think of your sons, about saving your children?” she asked, handing him the blunt. He looked hard at her, staring as if she’d breached a sacred burial ground of thoughts, though his glare was not threatening.
“I have so many thoughts when I hear that song. My first thoughts are of me. You know, wondering if I have a future, or was I destined to be . . .” He trailed off his discourse with clenched fists and his head down.
“What? What was you gonna say, Babes?” She took the blunt and put it in the ashtray and reached an arm around his wide shoulders.
“I don’t know,” continued Lapeace in a melancholy tone. “It’s just that ‘Save the Children’ now seems such a small thing when so many of us adults are fucked up. I mean, damn, look at Aunt Pearl now. She’s a wino, stumblin’ around and shit. People smoked out, niggas killin’ everybody, scandalous bitches chasing riches and on top of all of that, one time huntin’ a mothafucka. This shit is wicked.”
“I feel what you sayin’, Lapeace. And sometimes I feel like things are hopeless for the black nation too. But we can’t develop such a negative attitude toward our future. I feel that what Gil is saying is right and what you are saying is right. In order to save the children we’ve got to have some idea of what we are saving them from. Therefore, it follows, that what we are saving them from, we are already victims of. Do you follow me, Babes?” she asked, kneeling
now in front of him, holding both his hands and squinting into his dark brown eyes.
“Yeah, I hear what you saying. Sounding like Aunt Pearl ’n shit. But that’s just some theory. We need more than that . . .”
“Hold up a minute . . .” Shima said, standing erect, one hand on her hip, the other waving wildly with her index finger extended, “. . . don’t be comparing me to your aunt. What I say is me, you got that?”
“Calm down, Shima, just calm down. I didn’t mean it like that. I meant that it’s been so much talkin’ about the problem that it gets in the way of action. Shit needs to be done.”
“I overstand that, but . . .”
“Wait a minute. Why you be sayin’ overstand instead of understand? Which is another thing, y’all be using all these code words and shit. What’s up with that?” he asked, honestly seeking an explanation.
“You know what Lapeace? Fuck you, all right. ’Cause you ain’t tryin’ to learn nothin’. You just wanna argue. I ain’t got time for it,” she said walking quickly toward her room, waving her arm dismissively.
“Come here, Shima,” he called out after her. “I ain’t tryin’ to argue. I only asked a question.” He watched her walk down the hall and disappear into her room. The door shut loudly behind her. Lapeace frowned and pushed back on the couch. A passing car backfired and he jumped slightly. When he walked and looked out of the window he was startled to see two black-and-white patrol cars parked in front of Shima’s house. Both were empty. He felt a momentary panic by their presence. What now? Using the rotary adjuster he positioned the blinds so he could see out but no one could see in. Standing perfectly still, with the music off, he watched the street and the cars. What the fuck are they doing here? He eased over to the coffee table and retrieved what was left of the blunt, which wasn’t much. He took one drag on the roach and put it back in the ashtray. At that moment two shadows moved across the blinds on the porch. Lapeace positioned himself in time to see the two officers collect themselves at the door and to see the blond one knock. He stood still and watched them look at one another. There came another knock. Lapeace stood firm. He hoped Shima wouldn’t come back up the hall wanting to continue the argument. But to him it wasn’t really an argument at all. The questioning she took as a challenge to her ways was but an honest pursuit by him to reach a synthesis in the dilemma she presented. There was yet another knock and this time Shima came out of her room and asked Lapeace who it was. She received no answer, yet when she entered the living room she saw Lapeace standing there looking out the window.
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